Traditional pet supply retail marketing involves displaying products available for sale in a pet store. Traditional marketing benefits by providing an emotionally personal shopping experience. It is hampered, however, by the expense and administrative difficulty inherent in displaying and stocking a large number or variety of different products, and the fact that certain items (e.g., dry pet foods) have limited shelf-life.
These shortcomings are alleviated in electronic commerce, wherein a web-site (e.g., www.pets.com) may display thousands of different items for sale, without undue expense or administrative difficulty. What the electronic commerce approach gains in thoroughness (the www.ebay.com web site has perhaps millions of different items on sale), it loses in the “personal touch” emotional experience of traditional retailing. Further, electronic commerce—and pet superstores—appear to lack the pet expertise one finds in smaller pet stores. This lack of emotional engagement and expertise reduces electronic commerce consumer loyalty vis-à-vis traditional retailing.
Retail selling (e.g., stores, catalogs, Internet, network marketing, specialty retailers, discounters, etc.) is beset with problems of customer access, market penetration, customer retention, operating costs and efficiency, personnel training and retention, inventory duplication, customer convenience, information availability, customer service, and growth. The present invention nominalizes and minimizes the effect of these problems. The TASI business model features an innovative selling and operating system it calls “Partnered Networking” (“PN”). It introduces a new distribution channel to the household customer that joins the personal touch of a field force with the efficiency and productiveness of leading edge technology. The present invention gives a company marketing capabilities that are not available with other selling systems. Customers will have convenience and service not available with other selling systems.
PN will be first applied to a receptive pet products market. Traditional retail selling displays products available for sale in pet stores (e.g., chain stores, specialty shops, discounters, etc.). Store-based retail selling offers a personal shopping experience and expertise (particularly in smaller pet shops). Customers deal face-to-face with sales agents and can see and touch what is bought. However, retail store selling is hampered by heavy startup and operating expenses, employee turnover and training, product display difficulties, geographical location, limited customer access, shelf space, shelf life, inventory duplication (e.g., multiple stores), “come-to-me” selling, and the quality of customer contact.
Electronic commerce (e.g., www.allpets.com) retains the limitations of “come-to-me” selling, but does alleviate many retail store problems. It raises convenience and expertise to higher levels and broadens product selection (e.g., e-Bay has millions of products). However, electronic commerce brings on new substantial problems (e.g., high costs of customer acquisition, advertising, branding, and delivery, etc.). Face-to-face contact is lost and the likelihood of customer loyalty is reduced.
Traditional network marketing-based retail selling significantly reduces both store and electronic commerce problems (e.g., limited customer access, operating and advertising costs, inventory duplication, customer acquisition and branding costs, customer retention, etc.). However, network marketing is operationally difficult in terms of maximizing the time spent on retail selling, managing, and training. Too much time is spent on recruitment, meetings, and administrative work. Negatives include: (a) revenues are primarily provided by sales to distributors, (b) average distributor earnings are less than expectations, and (c) distributor turnover is high.
The present invention, PN, uses technology and software applications to maximize field merchant business growth and customer control over their own buying activities. Field merchants, customers, and company operate in a 3-way “performance partnership”. The main elements of PN include (a) a sales force of field merchants equipped with laptop computers, (b) mandatory field merchant training (e.g., certification, professionalization, and customer relationship enhancement), and (c) Internet-based services for marketing, selling, fulfillment, and customer satisfaction.
The present invention requires a company to provide field merchants with a variety of turnkey business services, similar to services given by franchisers to franchisees. Its growth and compensation models follow the network marketing model. However, operationally, it is significantly different. PN uses Internet mainly to support customer and field merchant services and, secondarily, as a sales generator, PN requires all software applications to be integrated (e.g., supply chain, enterprise, information, selling, customer relationship management, etc.). PN surrounds customers with face-to-face, person-to-person, and electronic (i.e., on-line) services virtually on the spot. It focuses on training, information, and education for field merchants, company employees, and customers.